A prior art bird feeder is shown in FIGS. 1a through 1c. These drawings are taken from U.S. Patent Application Publication No. U.S. 2009/0020075, published on Jan. 22, 2009. The bird feeder comprises an elongated tubular receptacle 10, a base 11, a pin 14, and two pairs of interlocking feeder ports, such as pair 13 and 13′ and pair 12 and 12′. The interior portion of each port includes an interlocking structure such that the two ports can be held together. The interlocking is accomplished by inter-digitation of the ports, with the distal end of one port, such as port 12 or 13, defining an opening between two fingers, and the mating end of the second port, such as port 12′ or 13′, defining a single blade or finger that is received in the opening. The mating portions of the ports also define vertically-oriented holes that accept restraining pin 14. Pin 14 thus maintains the ports in the assembled position show in FIG. 1a. When the pin 14 is lifted, ports 12, 12′, 13 and 13′, and base 11 are free to be removed from tube 10. This construction facilitates cleaning of the tube, as well as the ports and base. Bird feeders that may be disassembled for cleaning, and reassembled for use, are known as “knock-down” bird feeders.
Although this construction may be effective to accomplish a tubular bird feeder that can be relatively easily disassembled for cleaning, the bird feeder may be expensive to manufacture because the two ports of each mating pair are of different constructions from one another. Accordingly, production requires two expensive mold tools, as well as inventory of both types of ports. Also, user reassembly after cleaning is made more difficult by the need to correctly marry the two different ports of each pair.
There is a need in the art, then, for a “knock-down” bird feeder with a feeder port that mates with an identical feeder port, to reduce design and manufacturing costs, and to simplify reassembly after cleaning.